'Rest Stop' - Nat Cassidy (Shortwave Publishing)
I’ve got enough of a ‘book buying problem’ as it is so as a rule, I try not to act on other people’s recommendations. Nothing to do with other bloggers recommendations, it’s more about trying to keep the number of books, in the house, under control. You know how it is ;o)
Every now and then though, a recommendation will catch me unawares and before I know it, there’s another book on a TBR pile, making me feel all guilty… ‘Rest Stop’ wasn’t on the TBR pile for too long though. I’m a regular subscriber to Brian Keene’s newsletter and when he had nothing but good things to say about ‘Rest Stop’, that was all I needed to hear.
And yesterday, I had some time on my hands so I thought I’d give ‘Rest Stop’ a go...
A young musician finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.
‘Rest Stop’ is one of those books where the page count tricks you into thinking that if you blink, the book will be done by the time your eyes open again. And then you start reading and find that you can’t blink because the story is so compelling and well told that you absolutely can’t miss a word of it. It says it all that I finished ‘Rest Stop’, read the preview of ‘The Art Of What You Want’ and then promptly bought that too.
I’ll try and be a bit more objective but, I really enjoyed this book ;o)
The premise is simple but the execution is nothing short of masterful. Cassidy matches the prose and tone to the plot and it all dovetails perfectly. This approach really brings out how urgent Abe’s situation is and how many unknown quantities there are, all contributing to a rising panic that Abe is barely keeping under control. The pace is frantic then, but always under control and being directed down the right path.
Add an antagonist that may (or may not) be more than they appear, and Cassidy’s knack of being able to find a rich vein of tension to tap (those scenes in the bathroom, especially when the lights go out, and you’ve got a book where there is plenty to both experience and think about. I couldn’t help myself, I really had no choice but to keep reading.
And watching Abe go through it all…? That’s a bit special too. It’s a little too easy to think of Abe as another dropout musician but there’s far more to him than that and Cassidy uses it all to not only keep Abe on his feet but also solve a few other problems at the same time. Definitely a character that I had to stick with.
Forget what I said about recommendations at the top of the page, you need to grab yourself a copy of ‘Rest Stop’. If you really don’t have enough room on your shelves, download the Kindle App and read it off your phone. Either way, don’t miss it; ‘Rest Stop’ is as bloody as hell but has real heart to it at the same time.
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